So yeh. Here’s a thought experiment about WordPress, hosting, and user experience that’s been rattling around in my head.
\nThe thesis: WordPress’s emphasis on hosting creates unnecessary friction that prevents mainstream adoption.
\nThis isn’t about whether hosting exists—obviously infrastructure is real. It’s about whether users should have to think about it, understand it, or make decisions about it when all they want is to publish content or sell products online.
\nI think the answer is no. And I think WordPress’s growth challenges stem partly from forcing users to engage with technical concepts that have become invisible in every other part of the internet.
\nI’m applying three frameworks to understand WordPress’s growth challenges:
\nJobs-to-be-Done (Clayton Christensen) – Users don’t want hosting—they want outcomes. They "hire" WordPress to create blogs or stores, not to manage infrastructure. Understanding what job users are trying to accomplish reveals why hosting choice is friction, not value.
\nCognitive Biases (Daniel Kahneman) – The WordPress ecosystem suffers from multiple biases:
\nFriction Analysis (Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen) – Every additional decision point reduces conversion. Behavioral economics shows that friction in user experience isn’t just annoying—it’s the primary reason people abandon complex processes. Hosting choice is friction that Squarespace and Shopify have systematically eliminated.
\nDisruptive Innovation (Clayton Christensen) – SaaS platforms started with "good enough" solutions for simple use cases, then improved and moved upmarket to displace more complex solutions. This is the classic low-end disruption playbook playing out in WordPress’s market.
\nThe synthesis reveals something critical: hosting choice is a feature WordPress users tolerate, not one they value.
\nLet me tell you what I’ve paid for hosting in the last few years:
\nThat’s it.
\nNow here are SaaS services and apps I’ve paid for during the same period:
\nNotice something? I never think about "hosting" for any of these services. I don’t wonder where Todoist stores my tasks. I don’t care which AWS region hosts my Dropbox files. I don’t need to understand Spotify’s CDN architecture to stream music.
\nThese services just work. I pay for functionality, not infrastructure.
\nImagine you’re not a developer. You’ve never run a WordPress site. You’ve never administered a server. You’re just someone who wants to start a blog, sell handmade jewelry, or create a community around your podcast.
\nHave you ever thought about hosting?
\nNo. Of course not.
\nYou might have heard of Squarespace or Wix. You’ve definitely used social media platforms. You probably use Google Docs, Canva, maybe Mailchimp. You’ve never once considered "hosting" for any of these tools.
\nNow you investigate WordPress. The first thing you encounter: hosting options.
\nShared hosting vs VPS vs managed WordPress hosting vs cloud hosting. Bandwidth allowances. Storage limits. Server locations. PHP versions. Database backups. SSL certificates.
\nYou just wanted to write blog posts or sell products. Suddenly you’re making technical infrastructure decisions you don’t understand and don’t care about.
\nThis is friction. And friction kills adoption.
\nAccording to W3Techs data, WordPress powers approximately 43% of all websites as of 2024, but this growth has plateaued in recent years while SaaS platforms have exploded. Is this a coincidence?
\nI don’t think so.
\nSaaS platforms succeeded by removing technical barriers. They don’t ask users to:
\nThey just work. You sign up, pay a monthly fee, and focus on your actual goal—creating content, selling products, building community.
\nWordPress asks users to become system administrators before they can be creators or entrepreneurs. That’s backwards.
\nThose of us in the WordPress ecosystem suffer from cognitive biases about hosting:
\nWe understand hosting. We’ve configured servers, optimized databases, managed migrations. It seems simple to us.
\nTherefore, we underestimate how confusing and intimidating it is for non-technical users. We think "just choose a host and install WordPress" is straightforward. It’s not.
\nWe’re so accustomed to hosting as a WordPress concept that we assume it’s necessary. We can’t imagine WordPress without separately-purchased hosting.
\nBut most successful internet products don’t require users to think about infrastructure. That’s the product team’s problem, not the user’s problem.
\nWe see developers and agencies buying hosting constantly. We interact with them in WordCamps, forums, and professional communities.
\nWe overestimate how representative they are of potential WordPress users. The silent majority who never adopt WordPress—because hosting is a barrier—are invisible to us.
\nLook at typical WordPress hosting marketing:
\nNow look at Squarespace or Shopify:
\nOne sells infrastructure. The other sells outcomes.
\nUsers don’t want hosting. They want results.
\nThey want:
\nHosting is a means to those ends, not the end itself.
\nInevitable response: "But developers and agencies need hosting options! WordPress is for them too!"
\nAbsolutely. Developers and agencies are important. They should have access to powerful, flexible hosting with full control.
\nBut here’s my argument: developer needs and mainstream user needs are different, and optimizing for developers at the expense of mainstream adoption is a strategic mistake.
\nIt doesn’t scale: Using a professional (agency or freelancer) is expensive, slow, and risky for most people. It’s not a growth strategy—it’s serving an existing niche.
\nIt’s disconnected from creative intent: When you have to hire someone to build your vision, there’s friction between idea and execution. Immediate creation is more satisfying and effective.
\nIt assumes technical complexity is desirable: Developers and agencies benefit from WordPress being complex—it justifies their expertise. But complexity is a bug, not a feature, for most users.
\nSupporting developers and agencies is important. But the strategy should be:
\nMake WordPress so easy that most people can use it without professional help. Then agencies and developers move up the value chain to handle truly complex, custom implementations.
\nNot: Keep WordPress complex so agencies remain essential gatekeepers for basic websites.
\nI’m not saying hosting infrastructure doesn’t exist. Obviously servers are real.
\nI’m saying: Users shouldn’t have to think about hosting when they use WordPress.
\nThis means:
\nJust like Gmail users don’t choose which Google data center stores their email, WordPress users shouldn’t choose hosting providers to run their sites.
\nInfrastructure decisions should be internal optimization problems, not user-facing choices.
\nStop selling "WordPress hosting with 50GB storage and 100K monthly visits."
\nStart selling "Professional blog platform" or "Complete online store solution" or "Membership site builder."
\nUsers buy outcomes, not specifications.
\nNo more "install WordPress, then find plugins, then configure them, then optimize performance, then set up security."
\nOffer complete solutions: "Here’s a blog with SEO, analytics, email collection, and social sharing built in."
\nSaaS platforms charge monthly fees that include everything. No surprise costs for bandwidth overages, additional storage, or premium support.
\nWordPress’s fragmented pricing (hosting + premium theme + plugins + maintenance) creates uncertainty and comparison complexity.
\nWhy do people choose Squarespace or Shopify over WordPress despite WordPress being more powerful and flexible?
\nBecause power and flexibility are only valuable if you can access them without friction.
\nSaaS platforms win on:
\nWordPress loses on all of these if it requires users to:
\nIf hosting is friction, and friction inhibits growth, what’s the path forward?
\nHide hosting completely. Users should never see:
\nThese are power user features that can be buried in advanced settings. Default experience should be appliance-like: it just works.
\nThis is harder. Self-hosted WordPress’s value proposition is control and flexibility. But even here, improvement is possible:
\nBetter defaults: Most users shouldn’t need to configure anything. Ship with sensible defaults that work for 80% of use cases.
\nClearer pathways: Don’t present every option equally. Have an "easy mode" and an "advanced mode." Let non-technical users succeed without engaging with complexity.
\nIntegrated tooling: Reduce the need for separate hosting panels, FTP clients, database managers. Build these capabilities into WordPress itself or provide seamless integrations.
\nWordPress’s openness and flexibility are philosophical values worth preserving. But they create tension with mainstream usability.
\nThe uncomfortable truth: Most people don’t value flexibility. They value simplicity and effectiveness.
\nThey’d rather have a solution that does exactly what they need with zero configuration than infinite flexibility requiring hours of learning and setup.
\nWordPress can serve both audiences—power users who want control and mainstream users who want simplicity—but only if it stops assuming everyone wants (or should want) to engage with technical infrastructure.
\n"There is no host" is a thought experiment, not a literal proposal to eliminate hosting infrastructure.
\nIt’s a lens for examining product strategy: What happens if we design WordPress experiences where users never think about hosting?
\nThe answer, I think, is WordPress becomes more accessible, more competitive with SaaS platforms, and capable of reaching audiences who currently choose alternatives because hosting is a barrier they don’t want to overcome.
\nHosting is necessary infrastructure. But user-facing exposure to hosting decisions is optional friction.
\nWordPress’s challenge: abstract away the complexity without sacrificing the power.
\nThat’s hard. But it’s also the path to mainstream growth in an internet where "hosting" has become as invisible as "servers" or "databases" for every successful consumer product.
\nPublished: May 10, 2024
\nRelated Content:
\nReferenced Frameworks:
\nNote: This essay was originally written as internal thought leadership exploring strategic questions about WordPress product direction. I’ve adapted it for public discussion about WordPress ecosystem challenges. The core arguments apply broadly to how open-source CMSs compete with proprietary SaaS platforms.
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